Lebron James Rap Genius

Fresh off he heels of he news that Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert not only got Lebron James back in Cleveland, but also led a $40 million dollar round for Genius (formerly Rap Genius), now you can annotate James’ letter announcing his return on the platform.

On Friday it was announced that Rap Genius secured a $40 million dollar series B round led by Gilbert with Andreessen Horowitz participating as well. As the same time, Rap Genius got rid of the “Rap” part because now the platform is about annotating just about anything.

Rap Genius was created to annotate people’s favorite hip hop lyrics. That platform caught on like wildfire with people annotating not only current hip hop but diving back through their old school crates as well. Shortly after the startup opened it’s New York doors, people started annotating other things outside of hip hop.

One of the most notable annotations in the startup world was the annotation of Andrew Mason’s farewell memo as he was ousted from Groupon. Even Ben Horowitz, the Horowitz in Andreessen Horowitz, participated in the annotation.

Rap Genius also noticed that the platform was being used to annotate poetry and literary works in schools so they appointed an education czar.

Today they, along with their investors, realize the power of Genius and with that the company is just called Genius.

A quick search of the Genius platform and we found, as we expected, that Lebron James letter, that was published on SI.com, announcing his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, was now being annotated on the site. You can find it here.

While a lot of current events that appear on the site get annotated somewhat in jest, it seems that the community and the moderators are doing a great job keeping the annotations positive and somewhat of historical note.

When James says “I was a kid from Northeast Ohio” the annotators talk about his life growing up in Akron and his early career at nearby private school St. Vincent-St.Mary. The next annotation is when James says “It’s where I cried” and that links to an epic, and emotional photo of James crying in a Cleveland Cavaliers warm up jersey.

Later on in the letter James says “our city hasn’t had that feeling in a long long time” in reference to the last time Cleveland won a championship. The annotation talks about the last time a Cleveland professional sports team won a title which was the 1964 Cleveland Browns won the NFL title.

It’s actually one of the better annotations on genius.com check out the letter in it’s entirety here.